Sentai @ Cons?

I just read some of the ANN coverage of the Sentai panel at Kawaiicon. How do we know what cons Sentai will be at? It seems that wherever David Williams goes, a Sentai panel follows, but I don’t know of any good way to find out at what cons he will be (Though I suppose his presence doesn’t guarantee anything). AnimeCons.com is so slow to update that it is rather pointless, and the staff that run it make no guarantees that any anime-affiliated person will be listed unless they are invited to the con as an actual guest. So if Sentai goes to a con as an industry representative, odds are they won’t be listed.

Sadly I haven’t attended a Sentai/ADV panel. ADV stopped its panels when I was getting into fandom and I haven’t found a Sentai panel yet. It shouldn’t be this hard as Sentai has had a small booth at my local Otakon (a con that I’m not really a fan of) for a while now, but they haven’t had any panels there in years. Now that Bandai is probably gone, Otakon needs another industry panel (one that doesn’t suck, cough Aniplex/Funimation cough).

Funimation has a http://www.funimation.com/sully/blog/funimation-convention-explosion/2492691. Does Sentai have a list?

[quote=“celestial_being”]I just read some of the ANN coverage of the Sentai panel at Kawaiicon. How do we know what cons Sentai will be at? It seems that wherever David Williams goes, a Sentai panel follows, but I don’t know of any good way to find out at what cons he will be (Though I suppose his presence doesn’t guarantee anything). AnimeCons.com is so slow to update that it is rather pointless, and the staff that run it make no guarantees that any anime-affiliated person will be listed unless they are invited to the con as an actual guest. So if Sentai goes to a con as an industry representative, odds are they won’t be listed.

Sadly I haven’t attended a Sentai/ADV panel. ADV stopped its panels when I was getting into fandom and I haven’t found a Sentai panel yet. It shouldn’t be this hard as Sentai has had a small booth at my local Otakon (a con that I’m not really a fan of) for a while now, but they haven’t had any panels there in years. Now that Bandai is probably gone, Otakon needs another industry panel (one that doesn’t suck, cough Aniplex/Funimation cough).

Funimation has a http://www.funimation.com/sully/blog/funimation-convention-explosion/2492691. Does Sentai have a list?[/quote]

Sentai doesn’t have a list as far as I know. David always goes to Kawaii Kon, and he almost always goes to Izumi Con in November. Other than that, it’s hit or miss.

We usually know when the AN people are going to cons because they let us know in advance and they usually make a thread here and tell everyone to visit them. But they don’t usually have a panel. However, they did have a panel at… oh dear. My mind is going, where’s Pup when you need him? He’ll be on in a few hours and he’ll remember.

AN has its own con-going staff? Interesting.

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to attend a con with Williams this “con season”. Tragically I missed him in VA last November.

Rojas, Sheehan, and the “new guys” are cool enough (I guess lol) but David Williams has an advantage over them in that he’s an accomplished director as well as the “face of Sentai Filmworks”.

Maybe they’ll roll into Otakon, though I don’t know if I’ll go there this year. Does anyone else who goes to Otakon kinda feel tired of it? Maybe it’s just me.

Supposedly David Williams and Matt Greenfield were there last year, but even when I got up to the table (that place is a zoo, and it was right at the entrance) I didn’t see either of them. Though I don’t think I could recognize any Sentai/Switchblade staffer besides Matt Greenfield and only because I’ve seen him in person (and because he has a slight resemblance to George Lucas). That said, the badges of the staff didn’t match up.

I see that David Williams has been frequenting a con in Indianapolis. With my luck, this would be the year that he doesn’t go. I’ve run into that lately. Sad face.

I was lucky enough to meet Matt Greenfield at Tekkoshocon in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago before the Sojitz explosion. He admitted that ADV had lost Gurren Laggan but was hoping to still finish work on the show. He also made some cryptic comments about anime companies taking over others libraries and consolidation, which we later learned was the transfer of titles to Funimation.

I would like to attend a Sentai one. They do attend a lot of cons, but mostly smaller ones. Their solicitations are often leaked ahead of time at them.

Sadly I missed several opportunities to meet Greenfield (Otakon, AnimeNorth), mainly because I wasn’t aware of who he was then. Like Greg Ayres, I was a sub-purist for years until ADV showed me that dubs don’t have to suck. Luckily I managed to track down Greenfield at a little Ohio con last summer (Where he had choice words for Cartoon Network, Bandai, and BangZoom; let’s just sayI don’t think he was broken up when Bandai of America died). Speaking of Greg Ayres, he was astounded to sign something which had already been signed by Greenfield and Grant, remarking that he hadn’t seen Greenfield at a con in years (Of course, he and Matranga said that they hadn’t met each other so I take that with a grain of salt).

I’ve been to many a Bandai Industry panel, and they’ve been rather lame. The (probably now dead) Bandai After Dark panel was awesome. I did the Sunrise panel last year. I’ve even been to a Media Blasters panel. I’ve also been to an Aniplex of America panel, where the head presenter had issues speaking English. I’ve been to several Funimation panels where I’m convinced that Sheehan & co are trying to see how far they can push a crowd of fans before they riot. Funimation Q&A is also useless as they have a laundry list of questions about which you cannot ask. The Funimation guys, being PR-exclusive guys, can’t answer any technical/specific questions unless they happen to have an actor, Bevins, or Harp on the panel with them.

All of that is just to point out the irony that while I’m a huge Sentai fan, I haven’t been to any of their panels but have been to several of their competitors’ panels. Shoot, I’ve even been to an ANN panel (which was half-baked) before I’ve been to a Sentai panel. It’s brutal.

I wish I could go back to when ADV was king of the US anime world. There are some Newtypes that I want, and looking through my old DVDs, the ADV Store had some pretty cool merch. I was a fan for the very end of the ADV era, but I missed it all. :frowning:

I know they never come to Ohayocon, those jerks

In their defense, I haven’t been to Ohayocon either. When I got the idea to go to the con, they’d stopped bringing in the astounding guest lists. For years now I have been able to meet their guests at cons much closer to me (and cons that I’d say are better, but I obviously can’t say for sure).

They used to have Matt Greenfield there regularly. Key word being “used”, sadly. I know he isn’t technically Sentai, but he’s close.

Over on animecons I read an old thread where an alleged chair of guest relations at Ohayo posted what he claimed Ohayo’s philosophy on guests to be, and I thought it wsa rather disturbing. The thread was ~3 years old (the animecons forums aren’t exactly abuzz with activity), and if the claims are true, that would explain why their number of guests has taken a nose dive.

(Emphasis added to make the “tl;dr”)
Thread:- AnimeCons.com Forums
Quoted post:- AnimeCons.com Forums

Searching here, I saw that TAN was @ NYCC last year. They had a “Mardock Scramble Photo Op”. What was that?

Is it like the Funimation FMA photo op at Otakon?

(Sadly animecons is not very industry-guest friendly)

Thread here:
http://www.theanimenetwork.com/20111010350/anime-network-heads-to-new-york-comic-con-a-anime-festival

[quote=“celestial_being”]Searching here, I saw that TAN was @ NYCC last year. They had a “Mardock Scramble Photo Op”. What was that?

Is it like the Funimation FMA photo op at Otakon?

(Sadly animecons is not very industry-guest friendly)

Thread here:
http://www.theanimenetwork.com/20111010350/anime-network-heads-to-new-york-comic-con-a-anime-festival[/quote]

They had a girl dressed up as Rune Ballot and anyone could have their pic taken with her. I can’t lay my finger on the link of the pictures at the moment, but I will find it!

[quote=“Slowhand”]

[quote=“celestial_being”]Searching here, I saw that TAN was @ NYCC last year. They had a “Mardock Scramble Photo Op”. What was that?

Is it like the Funimation FMA photo op at Otakon?

(Sadly animecons is not very industry-guest friendly)

Thread here:
http://www.theanimenetwork.com/20111010350/anime-network-heads-to-new-york-comic-con-a-anime-festival[/quote]

They had a girl dressed up as Rune Ballot and anyone could have their pic taken with her. I can’t lay my finger on the link of the pictures at the moment, but I will find it![/quote]

That sounds significantly cooler than funimation’s FMA photo OP. I mean, having a ~1:1 scale statue of Alphonse “steam punk robocop” Elric with which to get your picture taken is pretty cool, but this seems cooler.

This sounds like it blows Sentai’s “booth” at Otakon away.

Which leads me to:why was TAN @ NYCC but not otakon? Some year I should go to NYCC…

I’m not sure about that one.

But I do know that next weekend Section23 will have a booth at both Anime Boston AND Sakura-Con.
No panels, but there will be staff there on hand to chat with.

Our own SpazzySam will be in Seattle at Sakura-Con helping out! :slight_smile:

Being on the east coast I don’t really have the opportunity to go to Seattle, and Anime Boston seems to plan its proximity to Easter which rules it out for me.

It’s like they know I can’t go :wink:

Down at the very, very bottom in the grey tab, there is the Gallery.

That’s where the pics from NYCC are. (I finally had to ask.)

On the far right are the Mardock Scramble ones.

Thanks. That definitely blew the Sentai booth at otakon away. Shoot, I don’t even remember the more ornate bandai/funimation/sunrise booths having elaborate backdrops like those in the TAN pics.

All I remember the Sentai booth having was a small sign reading “Sentai Filmworks” and a smaller, but more elaborate, sign for switchblade pictures.

Funi could have used a backdrop like this behind their Al Elric statue photo OP. Having people milling about in the bg cheapened those pics I took.

Don’t forget Animazement is coming up in May. A few thousand people show up to that one! Start dropping hints!

Edit: Brain toot it is May and not March.

That’s the con which focuses more on jguests than US guests…iirc they have Harp & Spencer this year, but I don’t know if it’s worth it to me to drive down there. I haven’t heard good things…

Last year Sentai went to Virginia Beach in the fall. That could be awesome. I wouldn’t mind it if they hit up animenext in NJ this summer either.

Sentai is like the opposite of Visa when it comes to me :frowning:

You mean May, right?

http://animazement.org/
May 24-27, 2012
Raleigh Convention Center
Raleigh, NC

I read the OP’s “March” as “May” myself, I didn’t catch it.

Funimation will be there, and they have the best Funi rep (Harp) there. I get the feeling that it’ll just be the “normal” PR crew at AnimeNEXT, the guys who are as cool as Funi can be but can’t really sign anything nor do much to answer fan questions or provide “behind the scenes” info. So far, Sentai won’t be at either con…

To sum all that up in 2 words: Sad Face. :frowning:

It has been confirmed that Sentai will be holding a panel at Anime Boston on Saturday. It’s one of the bigger cons, so it wouldn’t be unusual for there to be an announcement, usually in the form of July’s releases.

Brutal. I’ll be waiting for the news from this panel to be covered here and @ Ann as once again I won’t be at Anime Boston. Greg Ayres and Tatum have expressed how it is a great (or greatest) con around (though they don’t get the attendees perspective) but that’s about the only thing going in the con’s favor. Come to think, Greg said that in an animecons interview, which makes it considerably biased as that site is run by ranking Anime Boston staff.

Speaking of Tatum, in his podcast he said (facetiously) that Anime Boston was so enjoyable that if they didn’t invite him back he’d go by his own volition. Sadly it doesn’t look like he was invited back.

Sigh, why couldn’t they have done otakon? It’s bigger, better, NOT ON EASTER, and is just up the street from me. IMO anime Boston is merely baby Otakon.